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Nasa's Voyager 2 Probe 'Leaves the Solar System' (bbc.co.uk)
The Voyager 2 probe, which left Earth in 1977, has become the second human-made object to leave our Solar System. From a report: It was launched 16 days before its twin craft, Voyager 1, but that probe's faster trajectory meant that it was in "the space between the stars" six years before Voyager 2. The news was revealed at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in Washington. And chief scientist on the mission, Prof Edward Stone, confirmed it.
He said both probes had now "made it into interstellar space" and that Voyager 2's date of departure from the Solar System was 5 November 2018. On that date, the steady stream of particles emitted from the Sun that were being detected by the probe suddenly dipped. This indicated that it had crossed the "heliopause" -- the term for the outer edge of the Sun's protective bubble of particles and magnetic field. And while its twin craft beat it to this boundary, the US space agency says that Voyager 2 has a working instrument aboard that will provide "first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space".
He said both probes had now "made it into interstellar space" and that Voyager 2's date of departure from the Solar System was 5 November 2018. On that date, the steady stream of particles emitted from the Sun that were being detected by the probe suddenly dipped. This indicated that it had crossed the "heliopause" -- the term for the outer edge of the Sun's protective bubble of particles and magnetic field. And while its twin craft beat it to this boundary, the US space agency says that Voyager 2 has a working instrument aboard that will provide "first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space".
second human-made oblect to leave the solar system
I wonder if there isn't some chunk of arrowhead embedded in an asteroid smashed off the Earth in some titanic collision.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
41 years to exit the solar system. 13 billion miles. Max speed 36,000 mph. 0.00005% the speed of light. Pretty cool!
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
-- TS Eliot, The Dry Salvages
[Ed Stone added this quote to the last slide of his Voyager-Neptune talk, at the Fall 1989 AGU meeting.]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
In the future a machine society will build it a giant space cloud with a leggy bald Indian hottie in a bathrobe!
V'ger
... to join with The Creator (in endless CG cloud scenes...)
This really is an amazing thing. And I mean that in the truest sense, not in an OMG-this-pumpkin-spice-frappachino-is-amazing kind of way. Sadly, I am guessing most people won't even read this story because it's not trash news.
I really liked this from the article: "Voyager 1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at such great speed. "
It's fascinating and hard to comprehend.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I fitted it with shields and an energy bomb from a Cobra Mk III.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space (i.e. crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium), but it hasn't left the solar system (the spherical area of space gravitationally bound to the Sun). The Oort Cloud, by current estimates, extends 10-2,000 times farther out than Voyagers 1 & 2 are now. The probes are expected to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud in ~300 years. The popular idea of the solar system ends at Pluto, but we know of many objects orbiting far beyond that.
...by Klingons.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Voyager 2 will have some catching up to do to leave the solar system as many times as Voyager 1. :)
https://xkcd.com/1189/
Agreed. I understand there's a Public Relations consideration in these announcements, but the real, final, inarguable milestone would be connected to the gravitational influence. It will have escaped the solar system when it's at a place where an object couldn't be held in orbit around the Sun. (How far away is that anyway?)
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Your reading comprehension is like you. Nothing. I didn't say ALL AC's, I said 90 percent of them. Thank you for confirming you are part of the 90 percent and not the 10 percent that has something meaningful to offer. Fuck off
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Have either of them made it past the Oort cloud?
No? When will that happen?
So you're saying there's some distinction between "leaving the solar system" and "leaving the neighborhood of objects which orbit the sun"?
Voyager 2 has an additional instrument that Voyager 1 lacked during its crossing:
Table-ized A.I.
FactualNeutronStar writes:
It didn't actually leave the Solar system. It entered "interstellar space" which means the Solar wind is basically negligible, but it is still well within the influence of the Sun's gravity. It's similar to saying that a rocket has left Earth because it escaped the atmosphere, despite the fact that it is still very much influenced by the Earth.
Classified0 writes:
Voyager 2 is traveling at about 16 km/s /c2 )
The speed of light, c, is about 299792 km/s.
Time dilation is t' = t*sqrt(1-v2
The factor then is 0.999999997
41 years is about 1293861600 seconds, and multiplying by the factor gives about 1293861596 seconds. So, Voyager 2 is about 4 seconds younger because of time dilation.
abacadabraupyourass writes:
“Voyager 1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at such great speed. But it will be in orbit around the centre of our galaxy with all its stars for billions of years.”
For some reason, while pondering about our short time here trying to rip our planet to pieces, it hit me how insanely large the universe is. And particularly, how tiny we are in the grand scheme of things.
mfwright@batnet.com
Assuming an infinitely slow orbit is possible, I'd expect the limit to be at the midpoint between the sun and the nearest celestial body... so a couple of light years, give or take.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Elon is right it is high time to abandon internal combustion engine. Newer engine designs will hopefuly translate into more options for space travel.
Technology has improved so much since then. We should send something new up for the next generation.
Why? Is there anything of use to look at way out there?
It's not like we are going to go any faster. Delta-V (speed) is produced the old fashioned way still. You burn rocket fuel and/or slingshot around a planet to get moving. I'm thinking that there are better uses for our exploration dollars than heading into interstellar space. I'd like to see some more exploration of Saturn's moons myself, more poking around Mars, or even heading inward toward Venus and Mercury might be interesting too.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
And don't come back!
Old movies aside, I don't think we are in any danger of that.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Agreed. I understand there's a Public Relations consideration in these announcements, but the real, final, inarguable milestone would be connected to the gravitational influence. It will have escaped the solar system when it's at a place where an object couldn't be held in orbit around the Sun. (How far away is that anyway?)
The suns gravitational influence ends at the outside edge of the heliosphere, which is about 100 AU from the sun. This is what most everyone labels as "the edge of the solar system"
The oort cloud starts about 10000 AU from the sun and is not under the suns influence in any way.
It also kind of makes the anon parent post a bit silly.
Any small or large value for 'solar system' will still be FAR closer to the sun than the oort cloud is.
Also keep in mind the oort cloud is insanely thick, starting just under 10000 AU and ending about 100000 AU away.
Alpha Centauri is two orders of magnitude closer to the outer most boundary of the oort cloud than our sun is.
Any definition of our solar system that includes the oort cloud would also be including numerous other solar systems and stars, completely nullifying any reason for having such a definition in the first place.
Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html
Did you miss New Horizons?
If you missed the Pluto flyby there will be another flyby of a Kuiper Belt Object ((486958) 2014 MU) on January 1, 2019.
Moving at 36,373 mph and heading toward the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It will be the 3rd man made object to leave the solar system.
https://xkcd.com/1189/
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
NASA should be written in ALL CAPS since it is an acronym
So is laser, taser, radar, sonar, scuba, base jumping, care packages, (giga/mega)flop, Pakistan, snafu, gulag, zip code, modem...
In the late 1960s, I was employed as a programmer by a subcontractor at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. That was before the Voyager satellites were launched. I wrote part of the software that would later be used to track and collect data from the Voyager ssatellites. I also wrote part of the software used by the project management to schedule tasks in the development and launches of the satellites.
Is there anyone else reading this who participated in the Voyager project before they were launched?
As far as I know, the probe did not actually ever attain solar escape velocity, which means it will continue to slow down and eventually be pulled back, entering into an extremely long and skinny elliptical orbit around the sun.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Perhaps this would be helpful regarding the scale and perspective
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia17046.html
This artist's concept puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units, with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, is about 30 AU.
Informally, the term "solar system" is often used to mean the space out to the last planet. Scientific consensus, however, says the solar system goes out to the Oort Cloud, the source of the comets that swing by our sun on long time scales. Beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, the gravity of other stars begins to dominate that of the sun.
The inner edge of the main part of the Oort Cloud could be as close as 1,000 AU from our sun. The outer edge is estimated to be around 100,000 AU.
NASA's Voyager 1, humankind's most distant spacecraft, is around 125 AU. Scientists believe it entered interstellar space, or the space between stars, on Aug. 25, 2012. Much of interstellar space is actually inside our solar system. It will take about 300 years for Voyager 1 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it.
Alpha Centauri is currently the closest star to our solar system. But, in 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will be closer to the star AC +79 3888 than to our own sun. AC +79 3888 is actually traveling faster toward Voyager 1 than the spacecraft is traveling toward it.
The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information about Voyager, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
Congrats on joiming the stupider-than-a-fucking-rock club.
Socialism is on the left,fascism is on the right,NAZI's were right wing fascists. Because you disagree with the entire rest of the world EXCEPT other self loathing incels in the US doesn't make you correct, it just makes you a fucking idiot.
https://www.snopes.com/news/20...
So... grow a brain and realize people don't hate you because you can't get laid, they hate you because you're a fucking NAZI asswipe. The biggest problem in the US is there are too many people as completely fucking stupid as you.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I guess I should have been more informative. The AC's that do nothing but insult are what that post was directed at. There are days that is all I seem to read when it comes from AC's.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
The heliosphere in the region dominated by the solar wind from the sun. The sun's gravitational influence extends far beyond that. The Oort cloud is under the gravitational influence of the sun, though a lot of it is rather tenuous which is why other objects that pass nearby like stars can dislodge objects in the Oort cloud and send some of the into the solar system where we usually call them comets.
To answer the original question, if there wasn't any other objects in the universe, the Sun's gravitational influence would extend out to infinity, getting progressively weaker of course. Since there are other objects in the universe as you travel away from the Sun, you'll eventually end up close enough to some other object so that object's influence will be greater than the Sun's. So it depends a bit on which way you travel away from the Sun, but if you pick a direction with nothing significant in the way you could travel up to about 3 lightyears before leaving the Sun's influence (if you get far enough away from anything you'll fall under the gravitational influence of the Milky Way galaxy itself).